Handwriting benefits the brain and gives you a new chance – 01/29/2024 – Education

Starting in 2024, children in grades one through six in public schools in California, in the United States, are once again having to learn to write in cursive.

This handwriting had left the Californian curriculum in 2010, but now it is back — a movement similar to that occurring in more than 20 American states, to varying degrees.

Cursive writing — in which you write in a script similar to italics, without necessarily taking your pencil out of your notebook — came to be seen as a dying technique in the USA.

Now, the California ruling reignites educational and scientific debates about the value of handwriting, as well as the benefits to the brain and the global implications if this technique ends up falling into oblivion.

California-based neuroscientist Claudia Aguirre says that “more and more research supports the idea that writing in cursive, especially compared to typing, activates specific neural pathways that facilitate and optimize language learning and development.”

In Brazil, the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) provides for teaching the ability to write in cursive in the first years of elementary school.

Karin James, professor of Brain and Psychological Sciences at Indiana University (USA), applies her research to children aged 4 to 6 years.

She identified that learning letters through handwriting activates brain networks that are not activated by typing on a keyboard. This includes brain areas that play a crucial role in reading development.

Other research, authored by Virginia Berninger (University of Washington), also showed that cursive writing, printed materials, and typing use related but different brain functions.

Furthermore, in the case of keyboard typing, the finger movements are the same for any letter key. As a result, if children only learn to type, they will miss the chance to develop skills gained from understanding and mastering the ability to write.

A small Italian study shows that teaching cursive to first-year students can improve reading skills.

Despite this, teaching cursive writing to young children was becoming rarer. In several countries, this technique is no longer mandatory.

In the US, although cursive teaching is coming back to light, it is not standardized — which poses challenges for teachers.

“More than 20 states have added to their educational guidelines the requirement for cursive writing between grades 3 and 5,” explains Kathleen S. Wright, founder and executive director of the Handwriting Collaborative, an organization that teaches good practices in this field. area. “But this requirement is not enforced or funded, so handwriting instruction is not addressed consistently.”

So, California teachers will now have to figure out how to integrate cursive into their classes.

Even so, the State’s initiative is seen as beneficial, at a post-pandemic time when ways are being sought to teach skills that reduce children’s dependence on screens.

“We’re seeing more and more parents complaining that their children are having difficulty in school, that they haven’t been taught how to write because they mainly use computers and other devices,” says Kelsey Voltz-Poremba, assistant professor of occupational therapy at the University of Pittsburgh (USA). ).

Cursive writing is still widely taught in Western Europe, particularly in countries such as the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Portugal and France.

Finland ended cursive writing requirements in its schools in 2016.

Canada tried to scrap cursive writing, but started teaching it again in 2023. The Ontario Ministry of Education reinstated the cursive writing requirement and is now becoming a kind of laboratory for other regions trying to understand what best practices are for this teaching, how long the classes should last and how often this technique should be taught.

Amid so many global differences, research highlights that there is no downside to learning cursive. And although the link between handwriting and improved reading is not necessarily causal, some educators fear that abandoning cursive could worsen students’ ability to read texts.

Furthermore, the mere act of writing helps memory and word learning.

“It is important to find a balance to ensure that students have skills that can be obtained without the use of technology”, says specialist Voltz-Poremba.

This text was originally published here.